3 The Case of Tiffany's Epiphany (20 page)

“I certainly hope so.”

Care takes another long look, “You know something, Dad?” She pauses dramatically and I await the bombshell. “You have really horrible handwriting.”

I sigh. “Thanks for the compliment.”

Kelly emerges from the bedroom and plops down on the couch; she’s still half-asleep. “Aren’t you going to say ‘Good morning,’ Kelly?” I ask.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” she answers.

“Do you know what I think would be a great idea?” I say with a zing in my tone.

“Nope,” Kelly says negating any of my zing with her droll response.

“Why don’t we all get dressed up and take in a service at one of the neighborhood churches?”

Care turns her nose up at the idea. Kelly is vocal, “Bad idea,” she says.

“I think it’s a great idea. It would do you girls good to listen to a good sermon.”

“You go, Dad,” Kelly says. “And bring home some loaves and fishes.”

“Sermons aren’t like take-out, Kelly,” I inform her. “You have to be there to experience it.”

“Then why are so many sermons on TV?” Kelly asks.

“Those shows are for people who are shut-ins and can’t attend a regular church service in person.”

“We’re shut in right now,” Care says.

“I’ll TiVo one and watch it later,” Kelly promises.

“I can’t afford TiVo,” I tell them what they already know.

“Mom has TiVo,” Kelly says, knowing it makes me crazy when she plays the “Mom has that at her house” card.

“I’ll tell you what, Dad,” Care assures me. “I’ll tape one at Mom’s and make sure Kelly watches it with me.”

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“Why don’t we go out and spend some more of your money?” Kelly suggests.

“I let you do that yesterday or have you already forgotten?”

“No,” Kelly says. “I’m considering yesterday was a practice day and today you’d give us some more money so we could go out and put to use what we learned about shopping yesterday.”

“As I said before, Kelly, ‘Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen.’”

My phone rings. Care picks it up and punches the screen. “Care, don’t answer my phone.”

“Hello,” she says.

“Well, Dad,” Kelly says, “if we can’t go shopping maybe we can use the time to put some new ringtones on your phone?”

“Don’t you dare.”

“It’s Tiffany,” Care says, handing me my phone.”

It’s Sunday, long before noon. If Tiffany is calling, something isn’t right. “Hello.”

Her message is clear. I hang up. “Get showered and dressed, girls. Tiffany is taking us to brunch.”

---

The Ritz, the Four Seasons, the Park Hyatt, and the Drake all have Sunday Brunch Bacchanalias. This is where they open up their ballrooms, pull out their best dinner china and silverware, and spread out enough food to feed a refugee camp on tables that circle the room. Their breakfast fare has everything gastronomically imaginable—and even unimaginable: fruit, cereal, toast, pancakes, scones, bagels, bacon, sausages of all sizes and varieties, white eggs, brown eggs, even green eggs and ham. You can order custom-made omelets in more flavors than Baskin-Robbins and Ben & Jerry’s combined. If you can stomach looking into the glassy eyes of a just caught salmon, you can scoop out some of its smoked flesh and enjoy devouring it. There’s French toast made from every type of bread including French. There’s biscuits and gravy for those from the heartland, grits for the Southern folk, enough shrimp to satisfy Moby Dick’s cravings, and a pastry display that would be the envy of that cupcake chef on TV who Care watches all the time. It’s enough to make anyone run for an antacid. And I won’t even go into the libations available, but the bar provides everything from Bloody Marys to Virgin Moonshine. Sunday Brunch is America’s answer to a Roman Orgy; all that’s missing is the adjacent barfatorium.

Here’s the kicker, these exorbitant smorgasbords come with a hefty price tag that usually starts at around fifty bucks a head. So a family of three will spend more on a Sunday Brunch than I will spend at the Jewel-Osco in a month. Ridiculous.

“Hi, little dudettes.” Tiffany spots us in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel.

“Tiffany,” I say as the girls ceremoniously group hug, “why don’t we just go to some local breakfast place. We don’t need all this food.”

Tiffany, who is dressed in tweed skirt and a yellow cashmere sweater, the standard fall attire for the fashion conscious girl of Chicago, says, “Nobody can really see you in a one of those overcrowded breakfast nooks, Mr. Sherlock. And if they did see me there, I’d be horrified.”

“Whatever.”

There’s something not quite right about Tiffany. Maybe her Sword of Damocles is poking her in the rear. I can’t tell what the problem is by looking at her, but I’m a bit surprised that she called me instead of her new life coach, Dr. R. Bosley Radcliff. Maybe the doctor doesn’t give advice on Sundays.

We are led by the Maitre d’ to one of the better tables. The waiter arrives the moment our butts touch down. Tiffany orders a mimosa. I order three orange juices. Kelly and Care are straining their necks at the epicurean potpourri surrounding us like a wagon train of food trucks. I tell my girls, “Here’s what you do. Walk around the entire room, see all the stuff they have to eat, and then decide where you want to start. Pick and choose carefully. Don’t get filled up on one thing. You can go back as many times as you want, so make variety the spice of your breakfast life.”

The kids get up and make a dash for the breakfast dessert table. Nobody listens to me.

I turn to Tiffany who is gulping the mimosa. “What’s the matter?”

Tiffany downs half of the drink before answering. “Something happened to me last night that’s never happened to me before.”

“What?”

“It’s kinda hard to talk about.”

“What is it?”

“Do you promise you’ll never repeat this, post it on Facebook, or tweet it to anyone?” She’s serious, very, very serious.

“Yes.”

She hesitates.

“Want me to cut my finger and swear to you in my own blood?” I ask to reassure her.

“Maybe later.”

“Okay, tell me.”

“Mr. Sherlock, I got shut down last night,” she whispers, as if she’s confessing that she once committed a horrendous crime against humanity.

“What?”

“This probably happens to you and maybe everybody else all the time, but it's never, ever happened to me.” She puts her head into her hands to hide her shame.

“What?”

“I got shut down.” Tiffany’s wrist goes to her forehead. She rubs her temples to ease the pain. She sniffles as if she’s about to break into tears.

I still have no clue what she is referring to.

Tiffany lifts one hand from her face and whispers to me. “I wanted to do it and he didn’t.”

“Do what?”

Tiffany drops both hands and gives me her
no one can be this stupid look
. “It, Mr. Sherlock,” she cries out. “IT.”

The explanation dawns on me like a fireplace poker to my skull. “Monroe?”

Tiffany nods and returns to the whispering mode. “After our date, I invited him up to my penthouse. I made it very clear what was going to happen next, and when I get his clothes off, do you know what he does?”

Even though I have a real good idea, I say, “No.”

“He starts posing and flexing.”

“Posing and flexing what?” I have to ask.

“His muscles.

“How many?”

“Mr. Sherlock. I’m standing there in nothing but my best lace chemise and a smile, and he’s there going through this Arnold Schwarzenegger, flex-a-thon routine in front of my mirrors. It was nauseating. And he’s oiled up enough to be in the Gay Pride Parade.”

“You think Monroe’s gay?”

“No,” Tiffany says. “I know for a fact he’s not gay.”

I don’t ask for an explanation.

“It was like he was more interested in looking at himself in the mirror than looking at me. Can you believe that?”

“No, Tiffany, I can’t.” I pause for a moment. “What did you do?”

“Well, I just stood there and watched him go from one pose to another, from one mirror to another …”

I interrupt her, “And you’ve got a lot of mirrors.”

“Lots.”

Hardly surprising.

“I asked him what he was doing,” Tiffany says. “And he tells me he’s ‘counting his cuts.’”

“What’s that?”

“I thought it was one of those diseases like bulimia. But I couldn’t see any scars,” Tiffany says.

I wonder how I’m going to put all this on an index card for
The
Original Carlo.
“Maybe it was a good thing you didn’t do it, Tiffany. You sure wouldn’t want to pick up something.”

“Plus, think what all that slimy stuff on his body would do to one thousand count satin sheets,” she adds.

“I wouldn’t lose any sleep over this. It’s him, not you,” I reassure her. “And there is no way he’s ever going to put this on Facebook.”

Tiffany gives it a second to sink in then peers up at me. “Thanks, Mr. Sherlock. I feel better already.”

I should charge her three hundred dollars for this, but I won’t.

Kelly and Care return to the table. Each carries two plates heaping with enough food to feed Napoleon’s army. I see pancakes, crab legs, scones, croissants, bacon, and lots of sweets, lots and lots of sweets.

“This place puts Hometown Buffet to shame,” Kelly says as she sits down.

“You take them to Hometown Buffet?” A shocked Tiffany asks.

“Once,” I lie.

“That is so not cool.”

Tiffany doesn’t line up in buffet line, possibly because she refuses to stand in any line. Instead, she nibbles off Kelly and Care’s breakfast abondanza. There’s plenty for the three of them plus the entire roster of Morrie’s Bail Bonds Bailouts—including Mrs. Whiner.

I rise and join the rest of the brunchers. Why not? When at a Roman Bacchanal, do as the Romans do. I have a cheese omelet, two slices of wheat toast, and a fruit cup. Dumb choices for a fifty-dollar meal, but I have no great interest in sampling the Chef’s Special Lobster Thermador or his prime rib au jus. Call me plebian.

As we are leaving the hotel, Tiffany asks me, “Have you found out who roofied me yet, Mr. Sherlock?”

“No, I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.” No pun intended.

“Why not?”

“I’m working on it.”

“You better get moving,” Tiffany says. “The effects of a crime like that can wear off quickly.”

I, for one, certainly hope so.

CHAPTER 14

The kids ate so much at the brunch, I almost have to roll them onto the ‘L’ to get them back to my apartment. By the time we get home, it’s late afternoon. They have homework to do, but no books to do it with because instead of me picking them up for the weekend they were more or less dropped in my lap with a note from Mom. I disturb their digestion process as they lounge in front of the TV set like a couple of couch potatoes. “We better get going.”

“Can we take our new clothes with us to Mom’s?” Kelly asks.

“If you do,” I argue, “you won’t have anything to wear when you’re here with me.”

“That’ll give us a reason for you to take us shopping during our visitation time with you,” is Kelly’s retort.

“Visitation time?” I repeat her phrase. “Is that something else you ‘picked up’, Kelly?”

“It does have a nice ring to it,” Kelly says. “So, can we, Dad?”

What am I going to say, “No?” I sigh out a breath to reveal my displeasure and tell them. “Go ahead, get your stuff, and put it in the car. Hurry up. We’ve got one stop to make along the way.

---

A different faux nurse mans the front desk at the Doc in the Box health center where Tiffany was treated last week. Different nurse, same attitude, “Yeah, what’s your problem?” she asks, as the kids and I approach her desk.

“Is Dr. Nehru in?”

“He’s with a patient.”

“I only need to see him for a few minutes.”

“That’s what they all say,” she tells me. She picks up a clipboard with a pen attached and hands it to me. “Sit over there, fill this out, and bring it back with your insurance card,” she growls. “I hope you have one, 'cause if you don’t, the county hospital’s right down the street.”

I take the clipboard, loosen the latch on its top, pull out the first page, and write on the back a short note in big letters and hand it back to the helpful hospital worker.

She reads quickly. “Tiffany Richmond? As in Richmond Insurance, Richmond?”

“She’d be the one.”

Immediate attitude adjustment. “Please have a seat,” she says cordially, jumping from her chair. “The doctor will be with you shortly.”

I take the girls by their hands and lead them to the waiting area. We sit as far away from the sneezers, the bleeders, and the scratchers as possible. It seems to be a particularly bad day for nasal ailments.

Five minutes later Dr. Omagalla Nehru comes out to greet us. “Richard Sherlock, so nice to see you once again.”

He ushers me to enter into his inner sanctum. “Wait here,” I tell the girls. “And try not to get infected.”

Neither is listening. They are both playing with their cell phones.

“Hey, Doc.”

“I have the results right here,” he tells me holding a few pages in his left hand. “Did I mention I had them done ‘stat’?”

“What’s the word, Doc?”

“No Flunitrazepan.”

“English, Doc.”

“No hypnotic sedative present.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“No Rohypnol.”

I stand there stumped again.

“She wasn’t roofied.” He surprises the heck out of me.

“If Tiffany wasn’t roofied, what was she?”

“She was given a mixture of testosterone, human growth hormones, and an adrenaline producing compound.” He pauses, sensing my inability to understand. “You might say Miss Tiffany was ‘Super-Red Bullied.’”

“You mean she was hopped up like Barry Bonds?”

“Lucky she wasn’t tested by the IOC, because she would have been banned from the Olympics for life.” The Doc laughs at his own joke.

The only person I can immediately suspect of doping Tiffany would be Alix Fromound. She slips Tiffany a Mickey, causing her svelte figure to inflate to something resembling the Michelin Man and Alix wins the next
Slim Is In
competition.